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PART II OF III

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I don’t know if finishing medical school gives a man better taste, or just the means to finally indulge the taste he’s been quietly carrying around like contraband. Maybe it’s both. All I know is this: when the Nash disappeared and the 1957 Ford Thunderbird appeared in our driveway, the neighborhood didn’t just notice. It straightened its collar.

The Nash had been an intellectual statement. The Thunderbird was something else entirely. The Nash suggested ideas. The Thunderbird suggested outcomes.

At the time, it wasn’t a classic. It was just a very good used car. But even then, even before nostalgia wrapped itself around every contour and Barrett-Jackson turned memory into currency, the Thunderbird knew exactly what it was doing. Colonial White paint, clean and deliberate, like a starched cotton button-down shirt fresh from the cleaners. A red interior that turned every woman who sat in it into an accessory rather than a passenger. It didn’t try to dominate the street. It simply outclassed it.

In a neighborhood full of Ford Customs, Plymouth Belvederes, and Chevrolet Biscaynes, the Thunderbird looked like it had been dropped off by mistake. Or intention. Our house, otherwise firmly rooted in the monotony of West Texas suburbia, suddenly stood out like a diamond in a goat’s butt. I didn’t know that phrase yet, but I understood the feeling. Pride, mixed with the low-grade anxiety that comes from knowing your house is now far too easy to identify from a distance—especially at night, especially to anyone cruising past twice.

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The proportions were perfect. That’s what struck me first, even as a kid. Nothing strained. Nothing excessive. Especially for the late ’50s, the restraint was almost shocking. The fins were present but polite. The chrome knew when to stop. And the porthole windows in the hardtop—those little circular apertures—were pure confidence. Like a pearl necklace on a little black dress. Decorative, yes, but also quietly daring.

The Thunderbird didn’t shout. It didn’t need to.

Most afternoons, the top was off and stored in the basement, the half not occupied by the medical student-turned-resident and his shifting hours. The car sat there exposed to the elements, unapologetic about it. I would climb into the driver’s seat and sit for hours, hands wrapped around that large steering wheel as if it were something sacred. Sometimes I’d slip on the Ray-Bans that always seemed to live on top of the instrument cluster. They were never in a case. They didn’t need one. They belonged to the car.

I’d stare at the engine-turned aluminum dash inserts until they nearly hypnotized me. The pattern caught the light in a way that felt deliberate, ceremonial, like something designed by a man who owned cufflinks. Even if the car had been open for days—leaves, dust, and the occasional cottonwood seed making small claims of ownership—the interior still smelled right. Old Spice. Swisher Sweets. Vinyl warming in the sun. It was the smell of male adulthood as I understood it then: composed, indulgent, unconcerned with permission.

Sometimes, if I was feeling especially bold, I’d wander downstairs and ask Geré if I could have the keys.

He never hesitated. Never asked why. Never issued warnings. He’d just smile and toss them to me, which pleased me as much as it displeased my mother. The result was always the same. I’d sit in the car, turn the key just far enough to bring the accessories to life, and let Connie Francis, the Isley Brothers, or the Highwaymen spill into the driveway. Occasionally a little Ray Charles or Sam Cooke, if I felt daring. I took imaginary trips to places I’d only seen in LIFE magazine. California. New York. Cape Canaveral. Anywhere but dust-covered Fort Stockton.

Occasionally, those imaginary trips became real.

We went to the Dairy Twin, just the two of us. The Thunderbird idled patiently while we ate soft-serve that melted faster than we could keep up with it, the radio murmuring about Berlin, Cuba, or some new president with good hair and a Boston accent. We drove out Highway 10, the land flattening itself into something that felt endless, the car settling into a stride that made distance feel optional. Once, he took me to the Prairie Twin Drive-In to see The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It was completely inappropriate for a kid whose literary diet consisted mainly of Dr. Seuss, but Geré didn’t seem troubled by that. He didn’t seem troubled by much at all, really.

I remember my mother and Geré arguing afterward. Not loudly. Not angrily. More like two professionals disagreeing about methodology. Child-rearing details I’m certain weren’t covered by Dr. Spock were debated in the kitchen while I pretended not to listen. Geré could not have cared less. He had already decided what kind of man he was going to be, and what kind of boy he thought I could handle becoming.

The nurses came and went.

They leaned into doorways. Laughed too loudly. Said his name like it had texture, giving extra respect to the acute accent over the final é and God knows what else. They fit into the Thunderbird as if it had been designed with them in mind, their crisp white uniforms stark against the red interior, stockings brushing seat piping, their perfume layering itself over the car’s already complicated scent profile—something floral, something medicinal, something faintly reckless. They returned later with windblown hair and compromised lipstick. No one asked questions, though plenty of people noticed.

The Thunderbird made no apologies for any of it.

It was around this time that I began to understand adult relationships weren’t nearly as simple as children’s books suggested. I overheard arguments between Geré and my mother about their other brother. The one who married young. Had four kids. Could barely get by. He drove a 21-window VW bus, something I didn’t appreciate until much later. The two uncles thought very little of each other. Only years later did I realize the contempt probably masked envy on both sides. Different roads. Different compromises. No clear winners.

The Thunderbird didn’t help smooth things over.

Its presence was a daily reminder that choices had consequences, and some consequences were upholstered in pleated red vinyl.

One evening, that consequence came calling.

One of the nurses—pretty, young, laughing—had neglected to mention there was a husband at home. Upon discovering his wife’s dalliance with the doctor, the husband decided the most rational course of action was to take a firearm and express his feelings toward our picture window. The glass exploded outward, scattering itself across the lawn like confetti for a parade no one wanted to attend.

At least it wasn’t the car.

The Thunderbird sat there, untouched, immaculate, as if daring anyone to try. In a neighborhood where houses sat close and curtains fluttered easily, private misjudgments had a way of becoming public events. Close-knit turns into close-quarters faster than anyone admits.

Not long after, I overheard my dad and Geré talking. It was the kind of conversation handled best by my father, though I’m sure my mother had choreographed it. Voices stayed low. Laughter surfaced inappropriately. I caught fragments. Angry husbands. Naked nurses in the basement. Fordomatic transmissions. A few days later, Geré loaded canvas water bags and strapped them to the Dagmars on the front bumper. He headed west for a while. California, I think. Or at least far enough to let things cool.

When he came back, he moved into an efficiency apartment to finish med school. The Thunderbird remained with him, but something about it felt more temporary now. Like a beautiful sentence nearing its period.

As his residency ended, so did the Thunderbird.

Early one morning, stopped at a light after a thirty-six-hour shift, he was rear-ended by a drunk driver in a ’55 DeSoto. The Thunderbird was totaled. Geré was relieved it wasn’t someone’s husband behind the wheel.

The car was gone. The lesson remained.

Years later, I understand the car better than I did the man. The 312 cubic-inch Y-block V8. The Fordomatic transmission. The way the steering wheel framed the world. The way the Thunderbird didn’t need to prove anything. It just existed, fully formed, comfortable in its own decisions.

Geré moved on. So did I.

But that Thunderbird—like the Nash before it—did its work quietly. It showed me that adulthood didn’t have to arrive wearing a scowl. That discipline and indulgence could coexist. That taste was often a long-held conviction waiting for opportunity. It made me always look at Fords first. Especially white ones. Especially white ones with fender skirts.

And that sometimes the most dangerous thing a man can do is park something honest in a driveway where everyone can see it.

What Geré did with the insurance check from the Thunderbird was another lesson entirely—one involving manhood, individualism, and thinking outside the box.

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